V. I. Lenin

Note on The Necessity of Signing the Peace Treaty

Written:February 24, 1918First Published:1929 inLenin Miscellany XI; published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected
Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 27, 1972, page 57Translated:Clemans Dutt, Edited by Robert DaglishTranscription\HTML Markup:Robert Cymbala and David WaltersOnline Version:Lenin Internet ArchiveMarch, 2002

Not to conclude peace at the present moment means  declaring an armed uprising or a revolutionary war against  German imperialism. This is either phrase-making or a  provocation by the Russian bourgeoisie, which is thirsting  for the arrival of the Germans. In reality we cannot fight  at the present time, for the army is agaiihst the war and  is unable to fight. The week of war against the Germans,  infaceof whom our troops simply ran away, from February 18  to 24, 1918, has fully proved this. We are prisoners of German imperialism. Not empty phrases about an immediate  armed uprising against the Germans, but the systematie,  serious, steady work of preparing a revolutionary war, the  creation of diseipline and an army, the putting into order  of the railways and food affairs. That is the point of view  of the majority of the C.E.C., including Lenin (and the  majority of the C.C., Bolsheviks), and of Spiridonova and  Malkin (the minority of the C.C., Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).